Ex-deputy will get 18 years after detainees drown in locked van

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A deputy in South Carolina whose police van was swept away by floodwaters within the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two ladies searching for psychological well being treatment trapped in a cage in the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury found former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood guilty of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households said they were not violent. Newton was only in search of medication for her concern and nervousness and Green’s household said she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily mental well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after a number of family of the women stated his resolution to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson advised the judge. “He abused the belief my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save time.”

Circuit Courtroom Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on every reckless murder charge and ordered the sentences served back-to-back.

The floodwaters swept the police van off its wheels in September 2018 and pinned it in opposition to a guardrail, stopping the ladies from having the ability to get out the sliding door they used to enter the van. Flood and a deputy with him did not have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, in keeping with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water saved rising before it bought too harmful and rescuers might no longer hear them.

“How awful should which have been to sit down there and wait in your personal death?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other components like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 just outdoors Nichols, but Flood drove around them after briefly talking to the soldiers.

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he couldn't turn around as a result of he might no longer see the sting of the freeway and was anxious about working into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his pleasure or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, but it was rushing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements mentioned.

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a terrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy instead of the tools issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him though taking the women to the mental health amenities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to attempt to give justice to those two girls by giving injustice to this good man," defense legal professional Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced instructed the decide he tried the whole lot he could to maintain the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was sluggish to reach.

“It was a sequence of errors on my part and other people that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the ladies,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been eventually rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities stated. Bishop will stand trial for 2 counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, however it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been able to minimize the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water got increased and faster and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to be taught to comply with the rules and use common sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, however I cannot overlook. Luckily, I still bear in mind my mom as a contented girl, a joyful lady who beloved her household," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.